Build The Relationship You WANT

Three years ago, a young 22-year-old man my son knew was walking along a local overpass that is one of the busiest traffic corridors in the Boulder area.

For some reasons that we’ll never really know, this young man – deeply loved by his family and his friends – made a decision; one that ignited ripples of impact across the lives of so many other people.

He decided to follow through with a choice he must have made before even getting to the overpass. He went to the railing, hiked one leg and then the other over the railing, and made the last decision of his life when he jumped.

He was critically injured upon impact, before an unwitting and innocent driver of an SUV hit him, finishing the task that the young man had set out to accomplish by jumping.

Recently, a similarly-aged young man made an equally indecipherable decision to commit mass murder in a theater about 40 minutes from my home. The tragedy he inflicted upon so many innocent people – dead and injured – still renders me heartbroken, enraged, and frustrated.

I did not know either man and it seems, at least to some degree, neither did the people close to them. They seem to have had no idea who these men had become … the level of confusion they were undergoing … the level of pain and hopelessness they were suffering. Or, maybe they did, but had no idea of how to help.

The loved ones left to heal from the debris are wondering why they couldn’t have made the difference they wished they could have. Some wonder why they couldn’t have seen the signs in enough time, and with enough clarity, to have been able to stop or prevent such tradgedy.

Do you ever wonder why, when someone’s in THAT much pain, THAT lost within themselves, they don’t ask for, or let themselves receive, help? Perhaps you have a pretty acute sense of the quiet desperation and despair that most of us deal with – on one level or another – and the perverse paradox of how seductive it gets to suffer in silence and isolation.

Maybe you’re tolerating that in your life, directly or through another. We often just say “Oh, it’s depression…I’ll get through it (usually on your own).” Yet, one of the most insidious things about depression is that it so convincingly assures you that no one can help, no one or no thing will be able to make any difference…it’s best to just try to figure it out yourself…or just resign yourself to it never being able to get better, followed by numbing it with either substances or overwork, or maybe even suicide.

While this is not unique to just men, men suffer a particular shame – often a hidden shame, even to them – about asking for help. Hell, we often have a hard time even telling the whole truth about how we’re REALLY feeling, period.

Somehow, the fear of being perceived as weak or being a wuss trumps the substantial self-love and self-respect it takes to allow yourself to get supported, when you just don’t have the remotest idea of what the hell to do with what you’re feeling.

Added to that, a lot of you are dealing with so many changes and stresses, unparalleled in your lifetime, you’ve likely subtly (or not-so-subtly) become so self-absorbed that you’re drastically losing your level of presence to yourself and others.

It’s really time to check and see if you’re awake enough…most people, at least the ones I see in my practice, are quickly seeing how much they’ve been sleeping in. It’s getting to the point where this individual and collective self-absorption, along with intense levels of fear, renders you unable to even look at your brothers or sisters around you from a sensitive & empathetic enough place to be able to recognize when your loved one (or yourself) is bullshitting themselves so masterfully that you’ve gotten drawn into the deceit right along with them. Men are experts at this.

No one but Holmes and the young man a few years ago were responsible for their choices but themselves. However, my heart is especially wrenched with sadness over isolation and internal dislocation that I think it takes to do what they each did.

Yet, if we don’t find meaning and learning in tragedies like this, we just risk actually deepening the collective ennui and resignation that’s actually a part of the problem itself. How can you do that for yourself, your loved ones, and your relationships that may be suffering from some of that same sense of resignation, flatness, and isolation?

The first step is to snap out of the fear and self-referential daze that you, me, and so many others so easily get seduced and mystified by. I urge you to really get out of your heads when you’re with people you love, and start listening to them with your heart.

Feel INTO them. How do they feel to you? Does their energy match what they’re saying when they tell you they’re “fine?” If not, take the risk of going deeper with them…don’t let them off the hook.

If you’re a man suffering like this, or watching another man suffering, encourage them to get to a men’s group as soon as possible. Trust your instincts and take the chance of annoying them with your deeper probing (to me, the consequences of NOT doing that justify the flak you may take for doing it). Go online and read the top signs of high-risk for suicide, and watch. If you, or someone you love, is suffering from any of those symptoms, ask for and seek out help.

None of us deserve to suffer the costs of not asking for help, nor do we have the right – through our own self-neglect – to then cause the level of suffering in our loved ones and others these two men caused.

I want to ask you to stop reading this for a moment, and just sit, close your eyes, take some deep breaths, and see if you can remember a time in your life where you felt deeply, truly, unambiguously loved. See the person/people involved, where you were, what was happening, the sounds…feel that feeling of being loved throughout your body, noticing where in your body you most feel it. Stop reading this now and go do that. Come back and finish this article after you’ve done that.

Now, as you come back, still staying connected as best you can be with all those bodily sensations, I’d like you to ask yourself, “How often do I feel this way when I tell my partner, spouse, child, or friend that I love them?” How often are you really authentically feeling what you say when you utter “I love you” to someone dear? Now, ask yourself (and be brutally honest), “Do I feel this in my relationship with my partner more often than not?” Ask yourself, “Do I feel it with myself more often than not?”

Ideally, the answers to those two questions are “yes.” Yet, escalating divorce rates and rising levels of significant behavioral and learning issues with children would seem to indicate that that ideal is not the direction that things are going in with many many people. Our work with couples is bearing this out, as well. So, what’s the problem, really?

A key difficulty is that many of you aren’t really clear on how you truly feel/experience love and being loved. From what we’ve heard from all the couples we’ve worked with over the years, many are also suffering under the notion that how it felt in the beginning of a relationship is exactly how it still ought to be feeling now that the “honeymoon” has worn off. Another big issue is that you’re not likely stopping to newly and periodically think about the idea that the way you specifically feel love and loved is DIFFERENT from what makes anyone else feel loved, including the love partner you may have in your life…contrary to what Hollywood and Hallmark wants you to believe.

Now, imagine what could happen if you KNEW what YOUR way is, in such a way that you could communicate it to your partner they’d really get it (and, vice-versa). And, what if that communication came more from your heart (which, by the way, has more neurological connections than there are in your brain) than your mind? Here’s a way to look at it.

If you have a smartphone of some kind or a tablet, like an iPad, you probably know that what makes them run, just like our computers, is an Operating System. If you’re an Apple fan like us, then you know your iPhone and/or iPad runs on the MacOS (or Mac operating system). Did you know that you have your own unique Love Operating System (LoveOS), and that it’s one of three key foundations of great relating with anyone? That LoveOS is based on a combination of your neurological experiences that have been coded internally, and a lifetime of emotional (and even ancestral) history that tells you when you feel really loved. If you don’t know what our Love OS is, you can spend a lot of the time fumbling around haphazardly trying to get your love quota filled (giving and receiving) and wonder why you’re usually not satisfied, want more and more from your relationships, and are wondering “Is this as good as it gets?”

Two of the other key bedrocks of great relating are being masterful at communicating, and having values (especially relationship values) that are aligned with the values of whoever you’re in any kind of relationship with. If those two aren’t strong, and you’re not clear on what both of your LoveOS’ are, that relationship keeps living as a discrepancy that easily can make you feel that your love for each other is diminishing…which may not really be true. Besides learning how to communicate better (which allows you to even look at how aligned your values are with each other’s or not), you also need to resolve to evolve in your relationships. Wondering what that means?

It means learning – newly – what love means to you, how you feel it the most, and helping your partner know what that is. It means doing the same with them. It means experimenting with doing what works for the other person, even if it’s different from what you like, in the spirit of learning a new language. It means COMMUNICATING, even when it’s challenging to do so. Mature human love evolves from puppy love, to crushes, to falling in love, to deep attraction, and deeper intimacy that continues to grow if you nurture it. Love is an experience and feeling to be tendered and fed…which we easily forget to do in our day-to-day lives. Knowing YOUR LoveOS, and your partner’s (or potential partner’s), makes all the difference in the world. If you can combine that with values that align with each other, you CAN create a rock-solid, long-lasting relationship like the one we both have been enjoying with our partners for years.

So, today, begin to look at “How do I know when I’m loved?” Begin to be familiar with what you feel AS Love. Find out what your Values are in life and love, so you can freshly re-align with those you’re in relationships with in a more harmonious way. There will always be challenges in men and women living and loving together – we have different styles, we have different brains and processing – but when you match someone’s LoveOS, you can hit that sweet spot inside them that says… “Aaahhh” and light them up. Even more importantly, if you’ll commit to consistently feeding Love within you (rather than fitting it in when your busy schedule allows), in your partnerships, and in your relationship with your Spirit and whatever the Divine means to you, then you will not be asking “Is this it?” as much.

You get what you look for, not necessarily what you want. It’s how the filters inside your brain work and how the law of attraction fulfills. Love is everywhere – where are you looking? Where are you being responsible for the Love in your life and how it shows up? Einstein pointed out that we can’t change or fix a problem using the same mind and same elements that created the problem in the first place. So, I invite you to learn what your Love Operating system is, first and foremost. Learn what the other’s is. And be sure to include your Spirit, and your connection to the Divine, in this exploration. Do that, and your life will shift.

If you’d like more information on how to determine your LoveOS, and how to work with it in your partnerships, you can get more info by clicking here.

Do you have trust issues with your partner (and/or someone you’re not romantically involved with)? If you don’t, you’re a rarity. With so many couples I work with, it looks like communication’s a major issue (which it is), but more often than not, the more fundamental issue you’re dealing with is what you trust and what you don’t with your partner. If you’re in this dilemma, odds are that your willingness to mend your heart, and get majorly re-connected with your partner has become inextricably linked with your mind demanding that the other person prove to you that they’re trustworthy. They have ample evidence of their partner’s untrustworthiness, and they continually wait to hope they can find that trust, often with almost hopeless skepticism that frequently ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Granted, the other person who’s not being trusted has most likely earned that mis-trust. To the degree you’ve earned your partner’s mistrust, the responsibility is on you to be looking at your behavior, your integrity, and your follow-through. If you don’t do what you say you’re going to do often enough, your credibility is swimming around at the bottom of the commode, where it’s a looong climb out. But, there’s another monkey wrench that I feel can help you make inroads into re-establishing trust with whoever you’re separating yourself from.

Interestingly enough, it’s all about looking at yourself (surprised, if not annoyed?). Specifically, how trustworthy are you? As I write this, one of my Mom’s favorite expressions when I was a kid is coming to mind, which was, “I don’t trust them farther than I can throw them.” When I look back at the people she most mistrusted, I can see (now) how much her beefs with them were often begun by how she had made herself untrustworthy to them first.

You don’t mistrust your partner unless they have some kind of habit of breaking their word or doing things that are out of integrity with themselves and agreements you may have with each other, right? Well, again, not to take responsibility away for the other’s actions, but how often do you break your word…especially to yourself? I was listening to a recording of my colleague, Ronda Wada, and she spoke about how often people break agreements with themselves for “Me Time.” I do that ALL the time! And, it got me to thinking…if you can’t trust yourself to love and honor yourself sufficiently, how can you trust your partner to “take care of me or my needs?” It’s not inconceivable that that unconscious behavior could get projected over to your partner.

If you’re doing that, what goes with it are usually unconscious and/or unexpressed expectations that your partner/friend is going to handle the heavy lifting for your desires that you’re not. When those expectations don’t get met, then our ego-minds go into child-like temper tantrums that are held together with the mental construct that the other person’s going to have to work even harder to get your trust back…when, really, you need to work to get your own trust in yourself back! To get your trust in yourself back, you need to face what the fears may be that your lack of self-integrity are pointing to that need attention.

Sounds easy, right?

Not usually…the promises to ourselves (and our well-being) that we break are legion and often unconscious. When was the last time you didn’t put the toilet seat down, take your supplements, meditate, work out, balance the check book, surprise your partner with that gift you’ve been saying for months you’re going to give them, eat the right thing, forego the toy so you could put more dough in the vacation savings account, etc.? When WAS the last time you broke a date with yourself? Hell, when was the last time you worked for more than 10 hours and got to bed at half past way too damn late?

If you want to test this, pick three things in this next two weeks that you’re going to commit to…with your partner, with yourself, or both. Write them down, and when you’re going to do them. Be specific. Have them be measurable in time and space. Then, when you go to bed, get the list and see how many of them you did. Also, notice how much you’ve taken care that day to consciously connect with your partner. See what kind of correlation there is, and with your mood and “neediness.” If you notice the latter increases the more you’re not doing for you, then I rest your case. From there, it’s time to start looking at what you need to do to get back on track with yourself and your integrity. The more that happens, the stronger the trust levels your relationship will have, which will give you that sense of being able to trust yourself and your partner farther than you can throw them!

Can success really just be a function of The K.I.S.S. Principle (Keep It Simple Stupid, for those under 40 who may confuse it with the band)?

Success, and happiness…those two things have been on my mind for most of my adult life (and my childhood, for that matter), whichhas been the problem. They haven’t been in my heart enough.

The mass definition of success seems to have morphed into an obsessive-compulsive focus on getting more, getting bigger, getting better. “Less Is More” has become disturbingly out of fashion.

When someone asks you, “How do you define success?” are your default answers mostly professionally and financially oriented? It’s rare that the “go-to” is Spiritually or personally oriented (unless I’m talking to a devout Buddhist). Identifying yourself as bank balances and a lifestyle seems to have gone alarmingly from being a guy thing to a human thing.

Now, if I had THE answer, I’d gladly provide it. But, like most people I know, I’m feverishly exploring the questions that might best lead me (and my clients) to the inner answers that can point us all towards the wisest direction for our Spirits. What I CAN say is that it’s abundantly clear a big part of any elevated-consciousness definition of success HAS to center on the overall way life is experienced below the neck. We need to shift from Deifying the ego and the mind, and find our way back to Deifying Love.

Sounds easy, right?

After 16 years in the corporate world, my body, heart, and life all felt mostly dead and flat while my income went up. When I finally started giving my true and enlivening gifts of healing, I came alive again. Somewhere along the line, though, even THAT got co-opted by an unconscious, automatic view of success that was inextricably linked to survival…not literally surviving, but surviving in a lifestyle that allowed me to THINK I was a success instead of feeling successful.

The more money I made, the more stressed I got, followed by incessant worrying about keeping that “success.” When I realized that being financially successful could feel identical to being financially unsuccessful, it became clear that a new paradigm of success was going to be needed for me, and the Planet.

So far, near as I can tell, the key to that new paradigm…one that’s sustainable for us and all species…has to rest in, be sourced by, and devoted to love and loving. Our worthy suffering (and, boy, are people suffering in ways, and at levels, that seem unprecedented to me) is based on our no longer being able to deny how we’re disconnected from – and even fending off – the love that is right there for all of us, if we’d only kick the addiction to busy-ness, speed, and GETTING.

It’s time to shift from defining success as a life style, and re-learn how to have and BE a life – like I imaging people did before technology came along – through authentic connecting and relating.

Where to start?

Here’s a success tip for you: start each day, no matter what, getting your keister on the Earth…in your back yard, at a park, on a beach…go to the Earth before your laptop, iPad, iPhone, or CrackBerry. Feel your own heart…and start asking it, daily, what IT needs. Try focusing on really feeling your connection to those you love…you’ll immediately start feeling successful. If you don’t know how to focus on your heart and your feelings…again, get on the Earth, close your eyes, and focus on breathing…if that doesn’t work, give me a call. If it does, then listen to what your heart’s trying to tell you about what success can really look like for you.

However, that’s one of the fears that came into my mind when my heart told me I needed to write this particular article today. In the past, that fear would have been enough to stop me from writing it, and doing an article that was going to be “safer,” or one I would presume/assume you’d like better. Now, it simply can’t stop me, whether I wish it would or not. So, buckle in…this is going to be a longer article than most, but I believe taking the time to read the whole thing will serve you.

It’s time for me – and I’d suggest for ALL of us – to really get naked (not literally, except with a willing partner, of course). This is not a retro throwback to free love I’m advocating. What I’m doing today is I’m getting emotionally, mentally, and Spiritually naked. If it ends up having you not want to read this eZine anymore, that’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I feel and believe it to be so important for all of us – in some way or another – to get naked in the way I’m about to.

First, though, a little background. When I was first coaching back in 1995, the prevailing wisdom was that you never told your clients anything personal about yourself, and you didn’t reveal any of your own neurosis (at least not blatantly), because you needed to be an expert and authority on whatever you were coaching about and give the impression that you had your s**t together. After all, who would want to get coached by someone who didn’t have aforementioned guano together? Yet, over time, I’ve come to realize two things: 1) most people are dramatically suffering because of thinking and believing that in their daily lives, no matter what they do for a living; and 2) doing that “looking good and together” thing is one of the things causing so much physical, emotional, Spiritual, and environmental damage.

So, if I’m really an authority or expert on how to live and have an authentic, rich, and Spiritually led/driven relationship and life…I better not have all my s**t together, because having that kind of life means having a relationship with your baggage and wounds that takes it all out of the closet and acknowledges that they’re a part of you worth loving, honoring, and appreciating (while not letting them run your life). They’re not parts of you to kill off. And…I better be willing to be totally real and authentic, or I’m a friggin’ hypocrite. So, it’s time to come clean.

If you’re a regular reader, then you’ve seen me write in the past about some of the intricacies of navigating the terrains of your ego-mind (what I call the grandiose part of our ego that’s committed to controlling our lives, your Spirit (your heart and emotional body, if you don’t like the word Spirit), and whatever you may hold as a Higher Power or Consciousness in your life. For the last several months (most of my life, actually, but I’ve only just recently really seen it clearly), I’ve been living a war. It’s a war that all of you are living, one way or another, whether you realize it or not. One of my mentors calls it “The War Within.” It’s the war between my ego-mind, and all its innumerable distortions, and my heart/Spirit that is the clearest, most pure part of me and everyone else (in my opinion). How do you tell the difference between the two? I’ll get really transparent here about how I do, by sharing what each of mine look like.

My heart and Spirit, from the time I was a little boy, has never been anything but joyous, deep, compassionate, extremely tolerant, very empathetic (and empathic), generous, wise, playful, trusting, deeply rooted in the certainty of just about anything being possible, and love personified. That heart, as a child, sat in the body of a boy born with a cleft palate, and hare lip, who – literally – from the first day of Nursery School (yes, I’m that old) until about mid-way through my sophomore year of high school, was in some way ridiculed, teased, rejected, humiliated, and excluded. That was just at school. That was where I got to get away from a broken home with a clinically depressed, alcoholic mother (if not bi-polar), a biological father who literally abandoned me at age five never to be seen again, and – for a few years – a step-father who was an abusive drunk that terrified me (now 40 years sober and one of the loves of my life). I know I’m far from being the only person with painful, traumatic stories…but, I want you to understand that your versions of this kind of hurt, confusion, betrayal, feeling invisible…you name it…they’ve all had some kind of effect on building the constructs of your ego-mind that war with your heart/Spirit on a daily basis. They’ve all been a part of building the debilitating beliefs that you plague and sabotage you right and left…the ego-mind’s favorite tools, you could say.

As all that horrible and painful stuff was happening to me, I grew to become someone who felt horrified to ever have to speak, period…not just in front of people, but I’d get self-conscious about speaking, at all, with anyone other than my family. I had few friends all the way through high school, I tended to be housebound a lot to take care of my Mom when she couldn’t hack life (which was often), and I had no Dad from 6 to 16 that could help me get what it was about to be a boy (and, someday, a man). My need to act like an adult by age 6, combined with all the loneliness and isolation that I thought at the time was my best protection against pain left me feeling ugly, unwanted, unappealing, and that I couldn’t count on anyone or anything other than myself…period. But, I didn’t want anyone seeing any of that.

I covered all that (the beliefs, the feelings) up by being a fabulously co-dependent and seemingly indispensable caretaker of countless people (mostly in my family, originally); cheerleader for everyone other than myself; workaholic; over-achieving, make-it-all-look-good upper management corporate slave; and over-eating, 275-pound walking dead person with the great family, income, and house with two cars and two dogs. Then – as now, lately – my ego-mind would keep feeding me a steady diet of shame, doubt, fear, constant reminders of “nobody can be trusted,” endless worry about how things were going to turn out (especially financially), and rarely letting love in…from myself and those who loved me that I couldn’t believe really could. When I was drinking that Kool-Aid, I never really felt like ME.

I started healing all that, shifted my career from corporate zombiehood to life coach, then relationship coach…and I found a Spiritual Path that really worked for me. But, here’s the thing I really couldn’t grasp. Unlike a lot of people that I feel go onto some kind of Spiritual Path to try to bypass their pain and wounds into some Nirvanic constant feel-good, my path has actually required me to get that being connected with my Spirit requires me to also not shirk, run from, or deny all my remaining layers of current and old pain, my frailties, my fears…in fact, damn it, it requires me to love all those parts and aspects, along with the true nature of my loving, compassionate heart that I’ve been blessed to help so many others do.

But now, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. There are so many planetary, economic, metaphysical, and socio-cultural shifts happening around the world – at a pace more rapid than I’ve ever seen in my 54 years – and people (including me) are fundamentally scared s**tless, and the fear’s only getting intensified by the very distractive way of coping with it that helps create it in the first place! You may not be admitting it, or maybe even aware of it. But, I’m seeing it all around me in the way that people are struggling to hang on to material things and lifestyles that they don’t even see are keeping them more and more disconnected from themselves, from love, and from their loved ones. Making money has become more important than love. We are deifying our ego-minds, and achievements…not that achievement’s bad…but being deified above heart and Spiritual Alignment…that’ll kill ya.

So, I wanted to come clean that I’m scared too. My ego-mind for the last couple of months (not-so-coincidentally, by the way, right as I made an even more serious commitment to living a life dedicated to bringing love to as many as I can reach) has had me waking up many mornings feeling low-to-enormous levels of anxiety and fear, pre-occupation with trying to control my future (particularly with my business) and being scared to death when it seems I can’t, fearing that people are finally going to realize I don’t know a damn thing (even in the face of years of successfully helping clients get themselves truly back to themselves), and being absolutely convinced that I’m only days away from living under an overpass somewhere, even when I’m nowhere near that.

You see, your ego-mind, and mine, tells bald-faced lies, all rooted in an inaccurate sense of self-insufficiency, that defy what’s actually true (or even could be), and continually strives to keep you feeling out of control and in a sense of constant threat of some kind. That way, you’ll work harder to try to control it all, you’ll DO more, and you’ll deify DO-ing and getting – over BE-ing and allowing your Spirit (and the Divine, if you believe in such a consciousness) to guide and get you through everything – good, bad, and ugly – with flying colors.

I KNOW I’m not alone in all this. How I’ve been “fighting the War” lately, to get back to returning to my connection to who I REALLY am and have always been, has been by: 1) letting go of my attachment to not feeling pain; 2) ceasing hiding this part of myself from those I love and trust (including all of you); 3) finding and constantly doing the Spiritual practices (or for the athiests and agnostics out there, practices that connect you with love) that I KNOW work, but my mind tells me I don’t need to do; 4) getting coached from those who’ve lived this War Within longer than I consciously have; 5) building a personal team of trusted loved ones around me that I can vent to who won’t tell me what I want to hear, but what I need to hear; and 6) remembering that my (and, I assert, everyone’s) life mission isn’t much about what I do for a living, but how I will live as an Emissary of Love, no matter WHAT I’m doing…and no matter WHAT.

When it comes to both life and relationship happiness, I’ve come to see that one of the greatest sources of what I would deem unnecessary suffering is how focused so many of us are on getting. That’s not an unconsciously incomplete sentence…”getting” is deliberately being used as a verb, because – in so many ways – most of what you DO each day, whether conscious or not, is about getting, isn’t it? Aren’t a lot of your days (one way or the other) about getting ahead, getting caught up, getting the right love partner, getting the right job, getting enough money to not have to worry about survival, getting happier, getting more sex, getting thinner, getting numb, ad nauseum?

The rest of what Rev. Beckwith says in the above quote is that what we’re here to LET is our Soul…that we’re here to let our Soul, and its purpose, emerge. I add to that that it has to follow its natural trajectory of expansion, which happens when it gets as fully expressed internally and externally – as often as possible. More than contemplating your navel and dreaming of Porsches appearing at your curb like The Secret film said you could, this path being deliberately pursued with commitment is much more likely to bring you what you really wish for in your life and in your relationships.

So, easy for me to say, but what makes it so challenging to be on a regular basis? Your relationship to F.E.A.R., the most insidious alphabet soup that you swim in so much of the time, whether you know it or not. F.E.A.R. tweaks everything…how you talk, how you listen, how you choose, how you decide what to choose, and how much of your time you’ll spend trying to get instead of letting your Spirit run, guide, and infuse the show.

There are two versions of this acronym I like a lot that really speak to the point of this article: False Energies Appearing Real and Forgetting That Everything’s All Right. When you’re afraid, your mind desperately wants to get rid of that fear, even though it’s the mind that usually creates that fear. Our lizard brain is so hard-wired to look for the next threat, that it doesn’t really know what to do with itself when things are going well for too long. Then, it wants to create and exert control.

One of the best strategies for which (to the ego-mind) is to try to predict the future and then have you believe you can and MUST make it happen. When you get sucked into that rabbit hole, you are working harder, more focused on whatever it is (including an inner state) that you’re trying to GET to/acquire, your level of presence goes to hell, and you forget that everything just may actually be more than alright. Then, the false energies appearing real kind of thoughts that are telling you “Things are good now, but what happens when…?” ignite even more of the forgetting that everything’s alright kind of thoughts, and off you go into trying to make them all right. See what an exhausting cycle that is? So, what to do instead?

You need to re-connect with what it is you’re here to LET out, to LET emerge. What are the qualities of your essence and core truths that, when not lived and expressed, make you even more miserable than not getting all the other stuff you’re trying and working so hard to get (or NOT get)? What are the aspects of you that are alive and dynamic whether you’ve got money or not? Whether you have enough stuff or not? Make a list of them. For example, for me, my compassion is first and foremost on that list. That is such an integral part of my Soul’s nature that to not be connected to it and give it freely, no matter what, is painful for me. It also makes me feel miserable, particularly when I’m denying myself that compassion (sound familiar?).

Then, once you have the list, see where/how your pursuit of getting is blocking the qualities on your list getting let out. Once you start looking at things that way, you allow your heart a pathway into a different kind of collaboration with your mind…one that can evolve into a partnership, rather than a competition. Pick one thing on your list each day that, before you make your mundane To-Do list (that you never seem to have time to get done anyway) you’ll take on bringing committed focus to letting out. If you don’t know how to do that, then focus on paying attention to where you’re going to do something or prioritize something that’s going to prevent the letting…then, make a different choice.

What do you have to lose that you’re not already losing by focusing on F.E.A.R. and getting?

CAUTION: If you happen to be someone who doesn’t have ANY kind of Spiritual path/philosophy you care about (or don’t believe YOU have a Spirit that guides you in any way), please don’t read any further. Doing so will either confuse you and/or piss you off.

It can’t be a secret to you how volatile life seems to be feeling these days. You’re probably used to gauging how “good” things are by looking at your economic picture first, if you’re like most people I know. If your money’s good, then everything else can be “taken care of.” Yet, there was an article in the Huffington Post recently that spoke of the rising suicide rates in Europe, as they are going through their version of what we’ve been in the midst of for the last several years. Reading it horrified and saddened me, because it made it all the more clear how much we’ve come to see our value, our identity, our worth, and our reason for living to be so fundamentally tied to whether or not we’re ok financially.

I’m not disputing that financial well-being is good; but, as a meaning for life and a main criteria for whether you want to hang around on the planet!?

There’s also the volatility around social change, both in our country and around the world…and it’s only accelerating (much like life, and time, in general). Haven’t you noticed how, in the midst of all the various political hot potatoes happening now, civility, compassion, and respect seem to have gone right out the window? Whether or not you happen to be someone who believes in global warming, there’s no disputing that Mother Earth seems more than a little pissed off, or at least has a lot of heartburn going on.

This all seems to be coupled with levels of personal turmoil, drama, and upheaval I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in the 16 years I’ve been working with people.

So, in the midst of that, how do you possibly stay happy?

At the risk of sounding like a cross between a bad Lifetime Network movie of the week and Scrooge, I believe that the beginning steps are 1) let go of having your life be about being happy all the time (more on that shortly); 2) have love be THE focus of your life; and 3) do everything you can to cultivate mastering being present.

One of the most disturbing and upsetting things I ever heard was when a noted Spiritual Teacher said to an audience years ago that “The secret of having the happiest life is to realize you’re not here to be happy…you’re here to evolve…to have your Soul evolve.” Well, no one was particularly pleased to hear that (certainly not me), and it took me years to finally “get it.” If you can realize you’re here to go through the whole spectrum of experiences (including pain & dissatisfaction), you can stop chasing the 24/7 dream you may say out loud you KNOW isn’t possible, but inside keep wishing/dreaming that you could have someday, if you just figure out the formula. Your ego will likely say, “Hell no!” Your Spirit knows better.

No matter what’s going on in your life – good or bad, happy or sad – love is the only thing, I believe, that will get you – and humanity – through what you’re in the midst of. If you look into so many faces, for example, in New Delhi…a city with massive levels of poverty and squalor…you can see peacefulness and serenity in their eyes, even as they may be sitting in their own waste. In our culture, we seem to need a major disaster to happen to tap into a sense of universal love that inspires us to selfless action.

If you want to be “happy,” you must make it the number one priority of your life to live Love in every waking moment possible. It must start with you, and how you treat yourself, your body, and others in your life. I know…basic stuff, right? But, our current global situation makes it pretty damn clear we’re not handling the basics. If you’re struggling with loving yourself, one rapid way to get to a loving feeling is to love on someone else selflessly. Be of service. Go serve meals in a homeless shelter, and see if you can see Spirit in the eyes of those you’re serving who have nothing left but life itself. It may not make you instantly gratified, but it will bring you and Love into quick communion.

Lastly, do you have any idea how present you are? If you need a long time to answer that question, chances are pretty high that the answer for you is “not very.” Take a moment right now to stop reading this article, and just close your eyes, feel the soles of your feet, and scan how your body literally feels (that is, what are the sensations) right now. Notice how your heart feels, emotionally. If you would do that once an hour, every day…your life would be radically different…and happier. Would you always feel happy? No. But, would you be feeling…at least for that one hourly interlude? You bet. And, love, awareness, and presence all start not in the mind (contrary to what your ego wants you to believe) but in the body.

My Teacher recently equated the struggle that we face individually, and as a Species, as if it’s a battle between the Soul (our own, the Soul of the Earth Herself, and the unified oneness of all beings) and ego for supremacy. If you were to look at Love as one of the purest forms of Light, the more love you allow in and emanate, the more your ego goes into conniptions. Look at it like putting a steak on the grill, and the steak gets grilled and cooked by the Light. If you’re not happy in your life, I suggest that you see if you’d be willing to let your ego identity be put on the grill to be cooked not out of existence, but transformed into the finest quality piece of digestible, loving Essence that forms the focus of all you do and all you be. I know for me…I’m taking my steak well done, thanks. Is it going to be easy or fun all the time? No. But, you don’t have to look very far around you to see how poorly the alternative’s working.

[This article is excerpted from Dr. Jose Stevens’ The Power Path, and is offered as a perspective from which to evaluate ways you’re feeling, challenges you’re facing, and opportunities that await you. It’s an admittedly metaphysically oriented perspective, but I invite you to feel into how it might be relevant to things you’re facing with regard to career, family, relationship, money, or your relationship with your life in general.]

April gives you an opportunity to look at all things related to power. All of your old patterns, belief systems, reactions, experiences, trust or mistrust, resistance, desires, access; all of it is up for observation, clearing, re-defining, clarifying, and re-negotiating. This is an opportunity to free yourself from your old beliefs about power and the old paradigms in which those beliefs have lived. You can look at your self-imposed limitations, and make moves to step more into your personal power in ways that will move you into your next level of expansion and evolution.

Everything this month will be powerful…from events to reactions and personal experiences, everything is potentiated with a greater energy and vitality. If you choose it, this can come as an exciting and welcome opportunity for moving ahead with your dreams and goals. For some, this may be a difficult time of resistance and overwhelmed, especially if you’re not used to handling large amounts of energy. Psychologically, it’s an interesting time as the construct of the mind, and how it sees things, is truly being put to the test.

The ego continues to regurgitate material (beliefs, patterns) that needs to be looked at and, in most cases, discarded without giving it much power. If those kinds of thoughts comes up, they should be acknowledged for what they are – old stuff to let go of.

It’s an ideal time to make your own bid for power. A bid for power is a decision and and action taken towards something you want in your life. It is usually very exciting and a bit scary…and, it definitely pushes the envelope of your comfort zone. It requires an element of courage and some risk. Being decisive and taking action are the operative words. True bids for power do not usually rest only on words. Action is necessary.

You will quickly find out whether or not you’re ready, or if the bid is important enough for your essential goals to be viable. Whenever you make a bid for power, you will always be tested. The test itself will tell you if you are on the right track. What can get in the way of a bid for power? Not being ready, or making the bid from a place of arrogance, impatience, or going after it based on someone else’s dream.

There are many stories of people being offered what looks like the perfect situation, for example, and then backing away at the last minute, because it is not what they really want. There are equally as many stories of people trying something and failing, because they weren’t ready. It is important to hold all failures as trial runs and opportunities for learning. This isn’t the time to be sitting around and doing nothing. This is the time to be active in working with power and to make concrete choices and decisions about how you will step forward more into more of your own personal power.

Power is an energy. It is an enhanced ability to manifest. It is knowledge, ability, wisdom, well-being, and inner security. True power is something that no one can take away from you. So, true power is never anything external that can be de-valued or repossessed. Power is your health, talent, service, higher mind, ability to love, your creativity, and our ability to work with the quantum field. This is a good time to contemplate all your beliefs about your power, how you define it, how you interact with it, how you resist it and/or embrace it, and how much you fear it.

As you examine all this for yourself, it is important to understand that, in these times, healing will take place no matter what. It is up to you. You can be in resistance to it, which will cause pain and suffering...or, you can get on with the program. On the most personal levels, the healing available to you is about healing your relationship to power and forgiving everything that has compromised your relationship to and with your own power.

Pay attention to where your thoughts go this month. Remember that the Universe is very receptive and will feed you back [one way or the other] what you put out. If you are getting garbage, you are giving garbage. This is a powerful time to clean up your thoughts and beliefs. If you are in a funk, ask yourself what you may have been putting out that created it, instead of looking at what something or someone out there did to you to put you in that state. Reworking your mental process and waking up to the higher mind takes discipline and focus. No one said it was going to be easy, but it will be incredibly rewarding.

Regardless of your Spiritual or Religious beliefs, Easter is widely seen as a time commemorating so many things, not the least of which is the concept of resurrection or New Beginnings.

However you may celebrate Easter, I wanted to wish you and all your loved ones an Easter holiday that takes you to new depths of truly appreciating the Divine Love that you are and embody. I also hope that it’s the beginning of a time of Renewal and Reinvention for you that ignites an expansion within, and without, that you could have never imagined could be so sublime.

One of the reasons I’ve really come to see has got to be behind the still extraordinarily failure rate of relationships in our country is the fact that your average bear doesn’t have any real conception of why they’re even in a relationship. Oh sure, you know you “feel” a desire to be in one to whatever degree you do when you’re not currently partnered with someone. Your desire for companionship is also a motivator, most likely. If you were born between 1940 and, maybe 1991, odds are you had it drilled into you, one way or the other, that relationship was just something “You DO!” Or, maybe you’re just chronically lonely and can’t imagine any other way to knock that down. For that matter, you’d likely be surprised – even in this day and age – how many people still have it going on that there’s something wrong with them if they’re over 30 and never been in relationship.

Now, if you’ve heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, there are five basic categories of human needs (in order of ascending importance): physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The physiological level, which forms the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, includes the human needs of food, water, sleep, and sex, among others. Friendship, family, and sexual intimacy (in other words, some of the staples that us humans usually seem to equate with what relationships are for) are up at level number three, below self-esteem and self-actualization.

What’s interesting is that ALL of the needs Maslow’s pointing out are ones we indeed would call “basic human needs;” yet, nowhere in the pyramid (that I can see) is there anything specifically citing Spirituality or Spiritual needs, belonging, or actualization. If you tend towards the agnostic or atheistic, then that would be no big deal to you. However, if you believe in ANY kind of Spiritual path, or even that you have a Soul or Spirit that has its own needs, then this omission is a pretty friggin’ big omission…and, it’s one that goes a long way to explain why we just have so many struggles with making relationships work (and not just our romantic ones)!

To my thinking (and intuition), if you were to “find,” start, and maintain any long-lasting relationships of any kind solely to meet those “human” needs, then our relationships are doomed to be only as healthy and expansive as our basic conscious and (gasp) sub-conscious ego state(s). And, lest you doubt that that might really be a problem, how often do you find yourself doing things that you KNOW aren’t good for you, or are going to create problems of some sort?

Now, because there are some healthy and critical parts of your ego, this isn’t about telling you your relationships “shouldn’t” have any ego in them; frankly, I think that’s impossible. However, because the part of your ego that believes it’s more powerful than the Universe and always knows best is NEVER satisfied, then there has to be some sort of system of checks and balances that allow you to navigate the trickier aspects of human relationship in a way that hopefully helps you and your Partner, for example, rise above the pettiest levels of what creates disconnection between us. In other words, what can you make bigger than the fact that you’re just royally pissed off that your Partner didn’t get you what you think they should’ve for Christmas this year?

Well, what if you were to relate to your relationship/Partner (and, again, this can apply to ANY relationship) as both the vehicle for, and the expression of, your highest Spiritual knowing, feelings, and awarenesses? Now, I’m not saying that this would be in any way about overlooking things that aren’t working…but, I AM saying, when things aren’t working, our egos usually react out of fear, shame, and insufficiency…states I believe your Spirit’s incapable of knowing. What if you dealt with issues as if they weren’t some kind of proof of how badly things, or you, suck; rather, they are indications that your Spirit’s are out of alignment, and to explore (together) what it would take to get them re-aligned – within yourselves, and with each other? What if you were to remember that that other person, be they your Spouse/Partner, or your work colleague, are Heaven-sent beings that, in turn, reflect who you are as a Divine Consciousness? To make it even simpler, what if you could never forget that that other person is someone you love?

What do you imagine that such an orientation would do to conflicts, disagreements, and misunderstandings? Would it take you from the ego’s obsession with being right (or, more often, to not being wrong) to looking to an intolerance of win-lose scenarios…since you’d likely never be inclined to tell the Divine Force (whatever that is to and for you), “Sorry, but you’re wrong, I’m not…and, you LOSE, you schmuck!”

There’s a lot to write about this, but I’m going to just invite you, for now, to ponder this philosophical possibility, how you may be living it now, how you’re not, and what kind of Heaven on Earth existence might you be able to have when every relationship you’re in is an expression of THAT possibility. When you look at the other person with whom you’re relating as an expression of Divine Consciousness, how petty can you really get (well, pretty petty if you’re PO’d enough, but it may help you get out of it a whole lot quicker). If you’re willing to share your thoughts about it on my new Facebook Page, Recovering Your Relationship, I invite you to do so here.

Otherwise, be sure you at least share your thoughts and feelings about this with your loved ones, particularly your romantic partner…it can definitely take your relationship from mundane to magnificent and more sacred.